gameofthronesfandomcom-20200223-history
Food and Drink
Many different kinds of Food and Drink can be found across Westeros, Essos, and the rest of the Known World. As the Seven Kingdoms possess a medieval level of technology, most of their economic activities are agrarian, striving to meet the basic food needs of their populations. The majority of the population are poor, common smallfolk working the fields, who usually have only a basic subsistence diet. In the few major cities of the Seven Kingdoms such as King's Landing or Oldtown, the urban poor are outright separated from farmlands which produce foods, and thus if they cannot afford to buy imported food with money, they face a truly meager existence. If they're lucky, the mobs of urban poor and street urchins in slums such as Flea Bottom can obtain enough bread to stave off starvation, supplemented now and again with "bowls o' brown" as a minor meat source. At the other end of the spectrum, wealthy merchants and lords can afford extravagant foods and wines, including exotic spices and ingredients imported from distant areas. Foods *Bowl of brown *Lemon cake Wines *Arbor gold *Dornish red Other Beverages *Beer In the books In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the foodstuffs available to the inhabitants of the Seven Kingdoms are basically what was available in medieval Europe. Given that the Colulmbian Exchange had not occurred yet, New World crops and animals were not present to supplement the diet of Medieval Europe. These include animals such as turkeys, and plants such as maize-corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, tomatoes, pumpkins, bell peppers, chili peppers, avocados (from which guacamole is made), cocoa (from which chocolate is made), and tobacco. A problem encountered by J.R.R. Tolkien when he wrote The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955) is that his fictional Middle-earth legendarium is supposed to actually take place in our real-world, simply during a "lost historical era" some six thousand years ago, which predates written history. The continent of Middle-earth (set in the world of Arda) is actually supposed to have turned into Europe, reshaped through various natural disasters into its modern form. However, fans wrote in to Tolkien asking him how New World crops can appear in Middle-earth if it is supposed to be ancient Europe during a legendary past era. Tolkien explicitly stated that Hobbits eat potatoes and tomatoes, and quite prominently mentioned that they smoke tobacco. Tolkien's response was twofold. First, Tolkien removed references to New World crops when he could: the first edition of The Hobbit has Gandalf ask for "cold chicken and tomatoes", but this was changed to "cold chicken and pickles" in the third edition. No subsequent mention is made of tomatoes in the books, and thus the seemingly random appearance of tomatoes in certain scenes during Peter Jackson's film trilogy adaptation of The Lord of The Rings is considered surprisingly controversial in Tolkien fandom. Tolkien, however, either didn't want to entirely eliminate potatoes and tobacco or felt he couldn't easily eliminate them through simple omission. Even when he was first writing the books, as a master linguist Tolkien felt uneasy about using the modern names for these crops, given that they derive from Native American languages which would not have been in contact with ancient Europe. Thus he usually refers to "potatoes" as "taters" (barring a single moment when in frustration, Sam explicitly explains to Gollum that "taters" are "poh-tay-toes!"), and "tobacco" is referred to as "pipe-weed" - it's a kind of weed you smoke in a pipe (some readers got confused on this point, so in the author's Prologue which he attached to subsequent editions, Tolkien explained why he calls it "pipe-weed" and explicitly stated that it is a strain of Nicotiana, the tobacco plant). Second, Tolkien ingeniously developed the explanation that the Númenoreans brought these crops to Middle-earth from other continents, which they encountered during their numerous exploratory voyages around the world. Númenor is basically the Middle-earth legendarium's version of Atlantis, as it was an advanced civilization located on a large island which was destroyed when it sank into the sea (afterwards, in Elvish, it even became known as "Atalantë", furthering the parallel with Atlantis). The survivors who escaped Númenor's downfall founded the realms of Arnor and Gondor in Middle-earth. The Gondorian's ancestors thus encountered tobacco on a sea voyage to some other distant continent, then brought it to Middle-earth with them, and it eventually spread to the Shire where Hobbits invented the practice of crushing up its dried leaves and smoking them in pipes. Tolkien specifically gave this explanation for how tobacco came to Middle-earth, but it can also probably be applied to other crops such as potatoes. Author George R.R. Martin has stated that Westeros is loosely inspired by England during the War of the Roses during the 1400s, and thus possess a Late Medieval technology level - and, in general, only foodstuffs known to medieval Europe before contact was made with the Americas. Martin has not made an official statement on the subject, but New World crops and animals are rarely if ever mentioned. In particular, tobacco apparently does not exist in Westeros, as no one is ever mentioned to be smoking. Moreover, Martin went so far as to develop a fantasy-equivalent of tobacco, known as "sourleaf", which is chewed in similar fashion to chewing tobacco. However, sourleaf is explicitly not the same thing as "tobacco" just using a different name, the way Tolkien called tobacco "pipe-weed" but acknowledged that "pipe-weed" is really tobacco. Sourleaf is chewed like chewing tobacco and gives a similar mild narcotic effect, however, sourleaf causes a pink froth to form on the lips from its red juices, which if used habitually will turn teeth blood red (Masha Heddle, the innkeeper at the Crossroads Inn, is a heavy user of sourleaf, though this didn't come up in the TV series). Thus at first it would seem that Martin went out of his way to portray that New World crops do not exist at all in Westeros, to the point that he made an analogous plant which is similar to tobacco in effects but clearly not the same thing. On the other hand, however, stray mentions have been made in the books which say that New World plants and animals actually can be found in Westeros. It is mentioned that "pumpkins" grow in both the Vale and the Reach. During the scene in the first novel when Bran Stark is attacked by wildlings while riding (which occurs in Season 1's "A Golden Crown"), Theon Greyjoy was actually distracted from keeping a watch over Bran because he saw a "turkey" in the woods and tried to hunt it. Both turkeys and pumpkins were unknown to Medieval Europe; though the references are so obscure that they might simply be errors - the change from "tobacco" to "sourleaf" was far more prominent, and may indicate that Martin's overall intent was that New World plants and animals do not exist in Westeros. Another issue, which Tolkien also encountered, is that Martin uses the word "corn" in the older and generalized sense of "grain". Wheat and barely are both kinds of "corn", just as they are "grains". The crop known as "maize" only comes from the Americas, and is only one kind of "corn" or "grain", but over time the name "corn" has been commonly applied to maize as if it was the plant's proper name. Thus certain stray mentions of "corn" are usually referring to grains in general. That being said, unlike J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, George R.R. Martin has explicitly stated that his fantasy world of Westeros, Essos, and beyond is not supposed to be the same thing as our real-world, just located in the distant past of a lost historical era the way Middle-earth is. For that matter, Martin has also denied that it is located in the far future of the real world, or in the future on a distant planet, which is the revealed backstory for the Dragonriders of Pern and Sword of Shannara series. Westeros is simply on an alternate world with no direct connection to our own, and there happen to be some similarities, but it doesn't necessarily need to follow our world's history. As such there is nothing outright preventing tobacco from appearing in Westeros, Maritn just felt it didn't fit the setting (anymore than steam trains would). Thus, turkeys and pumpkins might simply have always existed in Westeros - just because, and without needing to be transported there from some other continent. Category:Culture